Part 2: Thoughts and preparation

I always kept the idea of a possible move to Israel in my pocket and cherished that someday we could make it. The fact that my family could make Aliyah was evident, and it took the form of my wife's beautiful Jewish face. But I had never been to Israel, and my exposure to the Jewish culture at the time was minimal: I read the translation of the Tanakh and some Jewish newspapers that my wife's parents received every major holiday. I haven't had any feelings for the land in particular, I want to be out of Moscow and Russia ASAP.

It sounds like a very poor background for making Aliyah when you look at it from the Israeli standpoint. But I want to emphasise here that miracles happen. I went from wanting to live anywhere sunny and safe and being indifferent to the place to have a solid connection to the land and its people. Despite the ongoing war and extreme cost of living, there's no other place I want to call home.

It's time to address a couple of elephants here: the two main factors that prevented us from considering moving to Israel were my wife's opposition to the move and my religious beliefs: the first lost its veto power when Russia went to war, but second was not easy to deal with. The known fact is that Aliyah is for Jews and their spouses (alongside some other family members). In the Law of Return, it is stated that it's for the Jews who are not practising any other religion.

Per se, it did not present any problem for me as a Christian, as I have never been Jewish, and since in Russia, all the marriages are civil, no one asks and checks if both spouses believe in the same diety the same way. So, legally, I could do it, and I decided to take my chances!

In 2014, we were not the only ones considering the move: When I called the consular services number and got someone on the line, I heard the queues were nine months long. So, we waited for almost a year to start the process.

Our son Mark was born somewhere between my first call and the first visit to the embassy. We refocused our lives on the family and him, a new person who had yet to form the personality but had already made the demands :).

Aliyah process

Nine months passed, and we were standing in line with many families like ours on the central Moscow alley with a stroller and some vague hopes to escape the winter for the Mediterranean sun. We had a file containing Soviet-issued papers documenting my wife's family history, the only remaining evidence and distinction between Jews and many other Soviets: for many Jewish families in Russia, being Jewish was not even a cultural matter, as several generations under the communists killed most or all the distinctions between the nations producing a new breed: "Homo Soveticus", the Soviet men.

The process inside the embassy building was kinda simple and required very little input on our side: the lady behind the desk typed something on the computer, looked at our papers, asked a few questions about Olga's family history, why we wanted to live in Israel and what do we plan to do there. I murmured something I thought should be pleasing to her and sat here waiting nervously for the verdict.

The verdict was that despite the many valuable documents we brought, we couldn't be accepted right now, and we needed to get one more: Olga's brother's passport (or something like that).

That sounded a bit funny, as he was not the one making Aliyah, but it appeared that after we brought his passport, she made another request to get something similar. So we figured out that sending us out bore some sense to them: either it was a way to control the flow of the immigrants or test our persistence in a rabbinic way by refusing us three times before finally accepting.

So, three visits came and went: winter turned into summer, and our son gained weight and became a happy and fun toddler. We switched the bassinet on his stroller to the seat and finally got the immigrant visas! A new flow of emotions filled me: dreams of being out of Moscow were replaced by the anxiety of someone who needed to pack his life in a suitcase and say goodbye to the remaining family and friends.